Holocaust survivors pay tribute to Polish diplomats
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
10.10.2018 19:30
-
Holocaust survivors pay tribute to Polish diplomats
Poland’s president on Tuesday unveiled a new tombstone at a Swiss cemetery for a Polish diplomat who helped Jews during World War II.
Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata pay tribute to Konstanty Rokicki. Photo: EPA/URS FLUEELER
The ceremony in the Swiss city of Lucerne honoured Konstanty Rokicki (1899-1958).
During WWII, Rokicki was among a group of diplomats led by the Polish ambassador to Switzerland at the time, Aleksander Ładoś, who produced fake passports of Latin American countries that helped hundreds of Jews escape from Poland at a time when the country was under Nazi German occupation.
Among those present at the ceremony in Lucerne was a group of those for whom the passports were part of family history: Leonie Rachel de Picciotto-Lesser, Annie Schlesinger and the son of Miriam Lewald, the only baby born in the Bergen-Belsen camp who survived the Holocaust. As he says: “In the darkness of World War II (…) there was a light of people who did good. We actually thought the Paraguayans gave us the passports. But those who really saved [us] were Mr. Rokicki and his staff, and we owe them our lives, as simple as that.”